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During the first year of her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship, this psychiatrist received an invaluable lesson regarding the importance of “treating the whole patient” in this case, a 16-year-old patient who is pregnant.

Two problems persist in the treatment of severe mental illness that constitute a barrier to effective patient-centered care: excessive reliance on a limited number of antipsychotic medications at the expense of other effective treatments, and the underutilization of other evidence-based treatment options.

Psychiatry is a profession that deeply needs honest workers who are willing to seek a knowing ignorance, to be dissatisfied, and to refuse to conform—doing so in the interest of the truth and of the profession, seeing both as inseparable.